Despite the initial violence of its triumphant
entry, Islam has long since made itself a permanent home in South
Asia, where ‘Indic’ Muslims went on to develop their
own indigenous strands of the one faith and have made major religious and
cultural contributions to the larger world of Islam. Though contrary to
the egalitarian thrust and aspirations of the community of the faithful (umma),the hierarchical caste-society had paradoxically embraced, preserved
and nurtured a diversity of social groupings, modes of worship, doctrinal
innovations, and political stances rarely equaled outside the
subcontinent. The ‘Hindu’ ethos of secular India,
one might argue, has continued to protect the sizable Muslim minority from
the forcible uniformizing that has often been attempted from above or
below in many avowed Muslim states. Feudal history is rife with examples
of Muslims and Hindus fighting side-by-side against coreligionists for
territorial gains. Hindu-Muslim rivalry has been culturally very productive,
not only through the emergence of new religious (e.g., Sikhism), aesthetic
(e.g., Hindustani music), linguistic (e.g., Urdu), etc., forms, but also
through mutual emulation in the devotional movements, Sufi mysticism, modes of
dress, manners, food, etc. Not only did syncretic modes of worship (GhâzîMiyã, SatyaPir, etc.) thrive, Hindus participated in festivals
like Muharram, just as Muslims did in Dashahra. South
Asian Islam has been defined by a creative tension between its allegiance to
Mecca
and its biological rootedness in the subcontinent. One
may only speculate as to how this Indo-Islamic culture would have developed and
consolidated itself had it not been for the intrusion of modernity through
colonial rule.

So diametrically opposed, at the socio-religious
level, are Islamic and Hindu self-perception that Jinnah was able to
demand, perhaps with justification, a separate nation where Muslims could
determine their own destiny. Syncretic cults provided the contested space for
the eruption of communal violence, Sufi warrior-saints were eager martyrs at
the vanguard of Muslim expansion, the pilgrimage to Mecca fosters a
religious identity that can negate even biological (let alone cultural)
inheritance, and for all its secularism India’s ethos today
remains inescapably Hindu. Not only were Islamic structures a violent
imposition of the Meccan orientation on Hindu centers of worship, even the
syncretic accommodations could be interpreted as an ideological tussle pursued
through peaceful means. The religious revivalism that finds socio-political expression
in the RSS/BJP would have eventually reared its head even without any perceived
threat from Islam. From this perspective, one marvels at just how much the two
segregated communities were able to accomplish together despite these
unresolved differences that go to the roots of their identities. “What emerges
in all clarity is the opposition between two worldviews with differing
understandings of community, history and the sacred city. Permanent
reconciliation between Hinduism and Islam will be achieved only when—by
reducing the inner distance between Mecca
and Banaras—the questions posed by (the mutilated stump
of) the world-pillar—which still straddles the boundary between the two
religions—are finally resolved” (Sunthar Visuvalingam, Hindu-Muslim Relations in Colonial Banaras,
concluding lines).

Pre-colonial Hindu-Muslim interactions were
defined by an “I-Thou” relationship that could range from a harmony of minds,
through dialogue with a disconcerting challenger, to a heated altercation
resulting in (much worse than) blows against a hostile adversary. But (the
evolution of) self-perceptions (and self-construction) were still mediated by
the reflected image of Self in the eyes of the rival Other. When
modernity usurped the place of the insistent interlocutor (“Thou”) for both
Muslims and Hindus, each was relegated to “They” in the eyes of the other,
someone no longer worthy of talking to but only about—the ‘brokering’
between the two traditions increasingly became the prerogative of a secular
scholarship, with its own agenda, that did not share their traditional
self-perceptions. Increasing ‘Hindu-Muslim’ polarization, it may be
argued, is largely the product of a modern mentality that drags
the dead-weight of both traditions into its reductionist wake.
Ironically, the ultimately religious legitimization of Pakistan
has resulted in intra-Islamic sectarian strife and the disintegration of Muslim
polity; the ‘revival’ of Hinduism has only further reinforced its image, even
and especially within Asia, as the idiosyncratic
product over several millennia of the geographical isolation of the
sub-continent.

Could South-Asian Islam, despite its Middle
Eastern origins, eventually assume the role once played by Buddhism, but
on an even grander scale, in radiating Indian spirituality and cultural
production around the globe? Could a re-assertive Hinduism contribute
powerfully and constructively to Islam’s struggle to adapt itself to modernity
without surrendering its transcendental message and its very soul? So committed
was Gandhi to Hindu-Muslim unity that he even offered the political leadership
of India to Jinnah, who was ‘pragmatic’ enough to realize that partition might
be in the best (immediate) interests even of the Hindus. ‘Progressist’
India, still a
breeding ground for ‘Macaulayites’, is as much a betrayal of Gandhí’s vision,
as an Islamic Pakistan, a breeding ground for fundamentalists, is of Jinnah’s
desire for a secular Muslim state. Gandhi’s dream of a ‘greater’ India,
for a civilization true to its own fundamental insights, went hand-in-hand
with a personal engagement in peacefully transforming Hindu society and
attitudes. Being a true ‘Gandhian’ today perhaps amounts to rethinking the two
great religious traditions with the help of post-modern categories, which are
themselves well into the process of deconstructing their own unconscious
Judeo-Christian bias and their underlying ‘colonial’ mentality already
exposed as a (neo-) imperial legacy. This forum is an invitation to focus not
so much on the (inevitable) ‘failure’ of Jinnah and Gandhi but on creating the
conditions for a Hindu-Muslim dialogue that is informed by the global
implications of the current civilizational crisis. The understanding of both
leaders evolved in the course of their interaction—let us not foreclose their
verdict on history nor our own.....

Participants are urged to study the underlying
concerns of opposing viewpoints with due diligence and respond with a judicious
balance of respect and candor. Let us conduct ourselves in a manner that proves
exemplary for others intent on Jewish-Muslim dialogue regarding Jerusalem,
or those engaged in the growing Hindu-Western debate on ‘Orientalist’ hegemony
over the representation of Eastern civilizations.